Roads not taken
by crankyhermit
Summary: Four things that never happened to four people.
1. Schadenfreude

A fair segment is based directly on volume 4 of the manga. Any deviations from the text are either due to my inadequate skills in translation, or possibly deliberate.

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Roads not taken

Schadenfreude

Please don't go, Cho-sensei. Stay a little longer. Play another game with us.

Be good, he tells them, laughing as the giggling children latch onto his arms and legs insistently and let themselves go limp so he can hardly move. I have to go home or Kanan will worry.

Miss Kanan won't mind. Just one more game, please? It won't take very long. Please-please-please? We said please so many times - Four! No, it was five! You said you wouldn't say no if we were nice and polite and said please?

All right, all right, what do you want to play? Just one more game, mind; you have to go in for prayers and dinner, remember? 

Yes, Cho-sensei. They pout, mock disappointment to cover their real delight at his acquiescence. The nuns are not much for play; they care for the children's bodies and souls, but laughter is too light and trivial, the wanting of it too dangerous for these orphan children, who will see little enough reason to laugh in their lives. He learnt to smile and play, but he learnt it late, and he's not sure he really knows how to amuse the children. Still, they seem to find him satisfactory, so he is satisfied.

Be good, he tells them again and again. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if everyone was kind and thoughtful to each other? It is a practical virtue he teaches. They cannot afford pride and willful caprice the way the pampered children of the townspeople can, dependent as they are on the kindness of strangers.

Be good or God will punish you, they intone solemnly in return, and he laughs with them furtively in horrified amusement, all of them glancing around to make sure the nuns are not there to see this mockery of their holy teachings. And he doesn't say that there is no waiting punishment; it is too much blasphemy to risk, and they will learn it for themselves soon enough, if they do not already know it. 

So be good, he says as he waves goodbye, but doesn't add: for the reason your sensei teaches you, not the other; they already know it. 

Be good, children.

I'm back, he calls to Kanan as he arrives on the step. I'm sorry for being late. I was playing with the children and forgot the time. The door swings open readily, unlocked, and he hesitates. Kanan?

He looks upon the shattered vase in which she placed fresh flowers every morning, the simple plates set out for their simple repast broken on the floor, their plain wooden chairs and battered furniture overturned. It looks like the work of brigands, but what do they have worth stealing? They are only poor orphans. It does not make sense. A picture they had taken together that bright spring day, when first they found each other again, lay face down, the glass broken.

There was no other way, the village head tells him later, there was nothing we could do. If we hadn't given them Kanan, I would have had to give them my daughter! His wife wept and gathered the frightened girl into her arms protectively, as if fearing he would take her away from them.

You know of him, that demon king of the Hundred-Eyes Clan they call Predator of Women. He was here.

So you offered Kanan as a substitute, says Gonou, his voice sounding strange and hollow even to himself. He doesn't look at the women, trying to keep his mind focussed on the here and now and hear the man out, though the demons are taking Kanan further and further away from him as they speak.

I couldn't possibly give my precious daughter to those beasts! How can people like you, who never had parents or family, understand how we feel?

Indeed he doesn't understand. Kanan is gone, who was all his world to him. She is dead, as good as dead, or better off dead. He thinks he understands this, but he has no tears for her, and his heart does not clench in pain or sorrow the way it is described in books. All he feels is cold, and an inexplicable lightness inside. He doesn't understand. There is a moment when he sees the knife sheathed across the mantel, when he thinks it should mean something to him, but then the moment passes. 

Good night, he wishes them, and excuses himself to put his house back in order and throw out the broken things.

The next morning, he goes back to the school as usual, and it seems that nothing has changed, save for the absence of flowers on the table. He doesn't kiss her goodbye as he leaves, and he no longer calls out to her when he returns. 

But everything else remains the same. Be good, children.

And the demons return, demanding another maiden in tribute. It is duly paid, and a servant girl goes weeping to her doom as her impoverished family watch, clutching the recompense that would pay for her sick little brother's medicine. It is the way of the world

Should he feel something? He doesn't know them except in passing; he greets them when he goes into the village for provisions.

And the demons return once more, demanding another maiden in tribute. He feels nothing, watching the same play re-enacted, only with different actors. He doesn't understand.

Be good, children.

And the demons return, time and again. He begins to find himself smiling as the people in the village go on with their lives.

And the demons return. He watches and smiles, as fear erodes away their love for their children, their sisters, their wives. What has he to fear? He will never understand them. He has nothing to lose.

Be good.

* * *

comments, criticisms, complaints etc all welcome.


	2. Bildungsroman

Another road not taken.

**Bildungsroman**

However small a weight is, when one has borne it for so long, it begins to feel like a mountain, crushing down one's shoulders, suffocating more than any mere physical confinement could. This is the true punishment, being so bound, so aware, with no distraction possible from what _is_.

He knows nothing, he knows nothing, all he is revolves around a barred window and the passing light that shines through into the cold stone chamber. It hurts him if he stays in its fierce warmth for too long, but in the raw burning that fades into peeling layers of skin he can pick at and the marvellous newness of rich golden brown stripes against pallid white left behind, there is change - there is difference, catching at his attention like tiny burrs on wild grass seeds that he doesn't remember seeing - oh, there is distraction. However briefly, only such tiny feelings, such tiny things exist. There is no prison and no weight, pressing on his temples like a headache he can't wish away.

__

Who had the headache? It wasn't him, but someone did. Who?

Things come and go. Seasons pass in pale green buds blooming into deep green leaves into red and gold and brown into white and back to the dying dying _dying_ buds of spring and _little dying beasts decaying on the brink of his existence just just _justout of reach and time passes though he doesn't know it.

_And how the weight bears down on him._

Then comes the shadow, intruding on the blinding light, crowned with its own bright sun. It speaks words that have no meaning to him, who has forgotten how to speak or never knew the sharp, impatient sounds rapping on his mind - _but he knows the voice, and he knows the sharp, impatient words, only the weight pressing on his head keeps him from remembering_ - expecting a sensible response to uttered non-sense.

But it reaches out to him, through the bars that no living thing passes without dying - _or perhaps he merely cannot keep time; they do die eventually, anyway _- and when he touches the shadowed hands, the chains and bars melt away, and he is - _nearly_ - free.

Such a wide, wide world outside, filled with a myriad myriad sights and sounds and smells and tastes and textures, and if he gluts himself on the plethora of sensations he can forget about that little weight, that trifling insignificant bit of metal locked around his mind - _oh, did I say his mind?_ - his head.

Compassion is a weakness and it is foolish hopeless optimism, more than wasted on those who have lost too much to feel another's pain. Pain is salt-sweet-bitter tears and the taste of copper on his tongue and watery red blood cool on his hands as the stinging cold raindrops - _he once played in_ - wash it all away. Anger is fear and blasted hopes and the hurt of betrayal - _don't die again_ - and wanting vengeance - _hot pressure on his head like it would burst _and _no no no he will not go back to the cave_ - and then - 

And then - 

He says he doesn't remember. In truth, it is only then that he can remember everything, but afterwards, the weight is back, safely locked around his head. 

For the moment, it is truth: he remembers nothing but the swarming gadflies of sensation stinging all around for him - _a myriad myriad sights sounds smells tastes textures waiting to be experienced what weight there is nothing around his head his mind no lock on his memory to bind him and press him down so there is nothing for him but _- to feel.

And again - 

However small a weight is, when one has borne it for so long, it begins to feel like a mountain, crushing down one's shoulders, suffocating more than any mere physical confinement could. 

And when it is finally removed, it feels like he is flying, free and laughing - _unburdened from all foolish attachments chaining him to flesh and blood creatures that will die, like the others who came before, unlike him_ - giddily with the sheer exhilaration of relief so much it feels like pain and loss. Having tasted freedom, he wants - he wants to sever the ties all over and never be bound again, to always be free and so perfectly happy. 

So perfectly happy, you see, light and free and pounding the damned beast that dared stand in his way and the noisy creatures crying to him and trying to bind him again - _all of them must pay_ - and strikes them down, hitting them again and again until they lie quiet and still and peaceful, so wonderfully peaceful, and he laughs for the sheer joy of it, the dazzling desert sun above that has no power to hurt him however hot it burns, free from wanting and the confusing clamour of unaccustomed sensations, free from fear or any notion of meaningless consequences - _he knows none of these, they are not the ones he knew, those are dead and beyond his reach, it doesn't matter in any way_ - and he is wonderfully, perfectly happy in this moment of uncomplicated, unalloyed freedom.

And there is movement, of perplexing brightness rising before him, not like the sun, but more familiar. He abandons his toys, confident he can return to them, or find new ones later, and stares at the dark shape against the glare of sun reflecting off sand, feeling as though he knows this one light and this one voice.

But he knows the words that will bind him, and lashes out, just in time or just too late, falling with the strange figure as the weight settles itself around his head - _and heart_ - once more.

Goku wakes and finds his friends lying all around him, so close to dead the distinction hardly matters any more. They are in the middle of the desert, and he has no way of getting them to help.

__

And he remembers killing them.

However small a weight is, when one has borne it for so long, it begins to feel like a mountain, crushing down one's shoulders, suffocating more than any mere physical confinement could. 

Goku raises his hand to his head, and pushes off his limiter. He laughs.

* * *

comments criticisms complaints welcome.


	3. Leitmotif

Nothing happened here. There are no ghosts and no voices in his head.

****

**Leitmotif  
**_A dominant and recurring theme._

What a lovely colour -

It's only a colour. An ordinary, common colour, not worth any particular notice. But notice it the women do. They cannot seem to find another topic of discussion whenever he is around.

What a lovely colour-

__

- oh, that woman is crazy, but you can't blame her; imagine, having to raise her husband's half-breed bastard-

- I'd have killed my Ryuu if he'd dared do that to me.

How did you manage to dye it that way?

He's heard enough. He pushes back his chair, rises, takes his leave. They are disappointed, but they will forgive him.

__

- did you see his hair? It's like blood-

They are wrong. Red is not the colour of blood. Red is the brightness of glass trinkets that makes a woman's rouged lips turn up and her eyes sparkle.

Red is the glow of warm embers in the fireplace; it is the astringent sweetness of wine on his tongue and the bright heads of poppies in the yard, it is the sun bleeding into the sky at dusk.

He knows the colour of blood very well.

Blood is the salt-metal taste of a cut lip, stickiness gumming his swollen eyelids shut against the light, it is hot-stinging-bitter tears running into the crusted brown gashes on his cheek. It is the pooled black coagulating beneath the beautiful and terrible woman, her store of hate split open to the white of bone and spilled on the ground before him. It is the shadows in Jien's empty eyes that cannot meet his-

__

Jien, such a nice young man, that poor boy-

- Jien who had killed her not to save him but to save his mother and himself-

__

- it's like blood-

Red is the blush that suffuses an apple overripe and headily fragrant, spilling its juice as it yields softly to his teeth when he stops by a fruit stall to greet the young girl who always has a smile and a sweet apple for him.

__

- have you seen him lately?

- and the footsteps echoing in the street outside as he waits in the darkness through the nights and days, the carcass turning into carrion, knowing Jien would not return.

Red is not the deathly pallor of the man lying in the rust-brown earth before him, guts showing pink through torn flesh and blackened streaks running down his face like the tracks of tears.

__

-it's been days, hasn't it? What is that smell?

Only a man, crawled from heavens only knew where, dying, and glad of it as his mother could never be, whose body had been borne uneasy with writhing maggots into the ground.

__

- ...look at the blood!

Are you dead? he asks, and the man raises his face slightly, smiles up at him. Gojyo feels shock like cold claws in his gut, but-

__

- is he still alive?

Could he be as glad to live, this dying stranger with his delicate features, so beautiful and terrifyingly familiar?

__

- better if he wasn't, who will take him now?

Does he dare try to bring back this exhausted creature that has all but gnawed off his own leg, this _youkai _that can look at him and smile as though all colours were one to him?

__

- the colour of blood-

Can he leave him behind?

He can't move, can't decide.

Indecision too, is a choice.

The feverish light in the dark eyes dim. The man sighs, lowering his head, and closes his eyes.

Gojyo drops his cigarette on the damp earth, and carefully crushes out the dying ember beneath his heel.

* * *

comments, criticisms, complaints etc all welcome. 


	4. Unheimlich

Last one. Finally.

* * *

**Unheimlich**

The 30th Toa Koumyou Sanzo, it is generally agreed, had been many things - a great Sanzo, a wise counsellor, a patient teacher, a gentle master, a good man - but he was rarely accused of being kind. One has only to consider his care for his young charge, the foundling who would become the 31st Toa Genjyo Sanzo, to learn better.

Not that he was neglectful or cruel, no; nor did he fail to love the boy as all children should be loved. But he was in every wise a master and teacher; a Sanzo, guardian of the Seiten and Maten Sutras; not a parent, nor should he be, for these duties were in conflict, and - a parent was not necessary.

Thus Koryuu: the boy drawn from the river by Koumyou Sanzo and cultivated as his successor, teased and shunned by other children, subjected to the fear and malicious gossip of idle townsfolk, envied and resented by his fellow monks for Koumyou Sanzo's presumed favour; called an unnatural child, catamite, _rakshasa_, god... No, if the treatment Koryuu received from all moved him in the slightest, he made no sign and never intervened, beyond offering the troubled child his patient counsel as needed. And Koumyo Sanzo's teaching proved true, for Koryuu would grow to become Genjyo Sanzo, greatest among Sanzos, who served during the terrible time when the holy Seiten Sutra was lost and youkai were driven mad by the Minus Wave, turning on their neighbours, their friends and their loved ones. He had disciples, followers, but he would never need the approval or support of any other to stand confident before all obstacles, for he was sufficient unto himself, as wise and strong as his teacher before him.

A story tells that in his youth, Genjyo Sanzo used to hear voices. Or a voice; the details of what he heard are not clear. At any rate, he was called, and he answered, following the voices or voice to a cave in the mountains, barred and sealed with powerful wards to keep both the captive chained within and prying intruders away.

What he found there no one knows for certain. With such strong protections, surely it could only contain a terrifying monster capable of destroying heaven itself. Yet some whisper that it was only a child, an innocent monstrous child, held endlessly prisoner for fear of what he was, what he could become. So Genjyo Sanzo came, and the two children, more and less than human, looked upon each other from within their respective prisons, and - can you imagine, what understandings, what confidences they might have exchanged that day? Perhaps he said to the child, _You are better off in there_; perhaps he put the suffering monster out of its misery. No one will ever know, because Genjyo Sanzo walked away alone, and he never was troubled by voices again.

Of the 31st Toa Genjyo Sanzo, much has been said that is unflattering and disparaging - that he was violent, quick to anger, given to vices such as smoking and gambling, and there are whispers of even more shocking and licentious behaviours - but they also say, and on this point none will differ - he was nothing if not kind.


End file.
